After a wellbore has been formed, various downhole tools may be inserted into the wellbore to extract the natural resources such as hydrocarbons or water from the wellbore, to inject fluids into the wellbore, and/or to maintain the wellbore. At various times during production, injection, and/or maintenance operations, it may be necessary to regulate fluid flow into or out of various portions of the wellbore or various portions of the downhole tools used in the wellbore. For example, a flow-plug may be used to block a flow path to prevent the ingress of fluids into the completion.
The flow-plug may generally be described as temporary, as it may not be desired to permanently plug the flow path throughout the useful life of the completion. Some temporary flow-plugs may function until removal is desired, at which point an affirmative step may be taken to remove the flow-plug. Alternatively, some temporary flow-plugs may be designed such that they fail when desired without the need for an affirmative step after their useful life has passed.
One method of removing temporary flow-plugs is to dissolve the flow-plug with a specific solvent. However, this method may not provide the amount of control that an operator desires. For example, if the flow-plug is only able to be removed through contact with a sufficient amount of the specific solvent, the operator will have little choice but to use the solvent to remove the flow-plug. If the operator later learns that the solvent may cause issues, either with other downhole equipment or the subterranean formation, the operator would have to find an alternative to the solvent, and if none exists, may have to remove and redo the completion with a flow-plug that does not require dissolution in said specific solvent.
Additionally, in completions utilizing multiple dissolvable flow-plugs, the solvent will take the path of least resistance. Therefore, the first flow-plug to be dissolved will consequently be the location at which most of the subsequently pumped solvent flows through. As such, dissolution of any remaining flow-plugs may not occur or may occur at a rate which reduces the productivity of the well.
Alternatively, some temporary flow-plugs may use mechanical means of removal. However, as with the dissolving flow-plugs, if the removal mechanism fails or would be damaging to the well, the operator is left with little recourse to correct the issue, except to remove and redo the completion or to operate around the failed flow-plug.
The illustrated figures are only exemplary and are not intended to assert or imply any limitation with regard to the environment, architecture, design, or process in which different examples may be implemented.